Title unknown

Prologue.

Present day

The walls were decaying, the pipes were leaking. This wasn't a house to fit for purpose anymore.
It was a grey afternoon but fairly bright, nice and calm. Well, almost.

"Have you cleared the first room yet?!" My brother Olly asks from several rooms away in this spacious Victorian mansion. The house, stripped of its wallpaper with no more electrics to power it only the arched windows to bring in light, was filled with cardboard boxes scattered outside the rooms on the top floor.

"Look, the lorries won't be here until tomorrow so we still have plenty of time to gather the belongings" I retort as I struggle to put the 50th chinois vase into the box. This wasn't an easy task and we had to stick to a strict schedule (I didn't choose it) which included minimal breaks if we wanted to make any progress.
"Yes, but only the first floor has been cleared so far and that took a lot longer than it should have! There is no time to waste." Olly impatiently replied from down the corridor.
"And I swear to god Rachael, if you drop another one of those vases I will disown you!" This was going to be a long day.

The rooms were cold and the tall ceilings that were damp with water dripping from them weren't helping. The air was thick from the dust now occupying the rooms after the items had been moved. We had proceeded to clearing out the first floor and the bedrooms although it has proven to be a challenge so far especially with the heavy furniture. These Victorians led very decadent lifestyles.

I sighed as I popped my head out of the bedroom door into the corridor "We should have a break now, I'm losing the motivation to keep doing this."
"Yeah ok, my back is killing me"
We moved away from the boxes and sat on the floor in the middle of the room. We opened our flasks and started drinking our tea.

"Are you sure we can't do something with this house? The mortgage has been taken care of from the will all this house needs is a bit of tlc to restore it." I said

Our estranged great-uncle gave us the house in his will and although he was practically a stranger to us, we were not going to hesitate to take all the antiques with us-who was going to stop us?

"Look, I'm sure that uncle John was a great guy, but we barely knew him. We have no personal connection to this place"

"Yes, but there are probably so many memories in this house that are yet to be uncovered. Are we simply going to sell it off and demolish the house?"

"We've been given a shit load of money, Rachael. I wouldn't really like to spend a large amount of it on restoring this house"

There was an awkward silence.

It's a shame having to leave such an old house like this, the gothic architecture was impressive, the old wallpaper may have gone but the stone columns still stood along with several miniature gargoyles sticking out of the walls, and made you feel like you were on Downton Abbey (although I feel more like the servant at the moment rather than the owner). This place will probably be knocked down for cheap new houses or turned into flats.

Olly stood up and left his flask on the floor
"We're losing daylight already. I'm gonna start working again and so should you"

Olly walked to the window. If you looked out the window, you'd see a large unkempt garden with a dirty stone fountain in the centre. But without doubt the worst part of the garden was the overgrown rose bushes at the very back that looked like they hadn't been touched for years. It was a mystery to me.

I walked up to the window "I saw it too. Of all the things that uncle John could've maintained in this decaying house, surely the garden would've been the easiest job."